Suresh Prabhu says he volunteered for merger of railway budget with general budget

New Delhi: Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu on Wednesday said he himself had volunteered for clubbing of railway budget with the general budget, and it was “not a takeover” by the Finance Ministry. [caption id=“attachment_3165018” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Suresh Prabhu. AFP[/caption] Ending a nearly century-old practice of having a separate budget for railways, the government from the current fiscal merged it with the General Budget, which was presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on 1 February. During an exclusive interaction with PTI, Prabhu was talking about the vision for making the public transport more efficient and profitable. He said there was only one source of funds for the railways, and that was the Budget. “Arun Jaitley will always say I have so many priorities and rightly so. If I were the Finance Minister I will say the same thing,” he said. To a question on merger of rail budget with the Union Budget, the minister quipped: “I voluntarily gave it up. It was not a takeover. It was a voluntary merger”. A separate Budget for Railways has been presented to Parliament since 1924 even though neither the Constitution nor legal requirements call for a separate Budget. The practice has now been discontinued.